For the past 20 months I’ve been a stay at home mum, and for the most part we’ve lived off one wage, this situation sets to continue as next year I’d like to go back to college.

Over the summer I’ve looked at our budget and expenditure in depth. I’ve figured out the main ways that we will be able to continue to afford ourselves the luxury of choosing to invest in the future, which will pay off both monetarily and in our longterm happiness.

1. Get What You’re Entitled Too

I’m not talking about sponging off the state here, just making sure you’re receiving all that you should be.

Most people, regardless of earnings, are entitled to something whether it be child benefit or tax credits. Make sure that you claim the tax credits and update them if there is a change. In my experience, even small changes can affect the level of your tax credits.

2. Make Money from a Hobby

Boost your household income by establishing a side income. Childminding is a good option if you’re already at home with your own child. Otherwise consider making money from your hobby. If you paint, sell paintings. If you make soap, set up an ebay store. If you blog, have you tried monetizing your site? It can be as simple as adding a little code. If your site is a page rank four or above try text link ads, I’ve found it to be the most stable income that requires no work other than pasting in the code.

3. Sell The Clutter

Do a sweep of your home and sell anything that you don’t need or don’t use. You can use the money to clear some debt or invest in home entertainment (see number 10).

4. Set a Budget for Everything

I find that having a ‘bills and essentials’ account and a ‘luxury account’ works well for me. I set a budget for food shopping, bills and petrol so that we have a rough guide of what we should be aiming for. I find that using the budgeting method works especially well with food shopping as it’s easy to keep on adding in extra treats, now I get the staples in and the money leftover (up to the agreed budget) is for ‘extras’ and treats.

5. Free Days Out

Spending money on lavish days out to theme parks is fun, but wholly unnecessary if you’re on a budget. This summer we’ve enjoyed going to the park, to the beach, for walks, the library, and to the museum - all free of charge. We’ve also sprinkled in a few low cost activities like soft play (£1.50/$3) and swimming (£7/$14, for three of us). We haven’t had any expensive days out this summer which is down to both Erin’s age and our budget, although we have taken advantage of some family perks! (see number 11!)

6. Savings

Try and build up an emergency fund for a ‘rainy day’. Even if it’s only a few pounds a week it’s nice to have a little extra available when you need it.

7. Save Money on Food

I’ve been using the classic tactics of meal planning, making a list and online ordering for sometime now, so when I looked at our food budget again I had to think of some other way to cut it down to size.

Over the past few months I have been trying cheaper alternatives to our regular buys, we have managed to cut our expenditure by around 10% by sticking with some of the cheaper alternatives. Note: we only kept the ones that were as good as, or better than (yes, there were some cheaper alternatives that were better) the more expensive version. Products that we have transferred to include; tortilla chips, salsa, shower gel, toothpaste, flour tortillas, rice, and laundry tablets. Non transferables included coffee, bread, butter, and fruit, these products presented a false economy which I’ll go into in a post soon.

8. Cut the Bills

Quite a few of our bills have risen steeply recently. Our mortgage has increased by nearly 25% in the last year, our gas and electricity by around 40% and our telephone by about 30%. It became clear that we needed to focus on reducing these if we were to survive on one wage.

I’m not really a big believer in changing suppliers every five minutes, especially if I get good service. I find it a hassle especially for utilities. So we have turned our attentions to trying to reduce our usage instead. We have began using the heating less, we’ve brought a manual clothes dryer to cut down on our tumble dryer use and we are also trying to be more economical in the car. Oh yes, and only call mobile phones in an emergency and keep lengthy calls until after 6pm.

9. DIY

Cut costs by doing it yourself. We recently saved ourselves some money by laying a simple vinyl floor in the bathroom. The total cost was around £45, if we’d had someone in to do it we would probably have been looking at paying into three figures.

10. Buy Entertainment Products for the Home

We recently received a windfall, we decided to spend some of the money equipping ourselves with some home entertainment. We looked upon this as a bit of an investment, we know that there will be some financially tight times ahead (during my year at college) and having entertainment at home means we won’t need to worry about not having any money to go out. Amongst other things we bought a Nintendo Wii which has already provided us with many hours of entertainment.

Bonus - Utilise Family Perks

Every family has perks that you should take advantage of when times are lean. For example we can holiday in a nice part of Wales as much of my family live there. Close members on the other side of my family have acquired a caravan in a picturesque part of Scotland, we’ve already been once and plan many more ‘freebie’ weekends away. And that’s not to mention the plethora of decorators, joiners and handymen that most families have at least a couple of. It’s ok to take advantage of these perks provided they are offered and you try and do something in return.

Any other ideas on how we can spend less?

Photo by flickr user Rogue Soul